Kristevan Themes in Virginia Woolf'sThe Waves

Abstract

Julia Kristeva describes three patterns of psychic identification: identification with the father and the symbolic, identification with the mother and the semiotic, and a refusal of either identification which results in a precarious balance in between. It is in the latter manner that a writer can access the paternal symbolic, or language, while nevertheless recalling and introducing the maternal semiotic into his or her writing. According to Kristeva, it is in this prevarication that a writer can revolutionize language. Against readings that take up other French feminists such as Irigaray to interpret Virginia Woolf's work, this article explores Kristeva's theory through a reading of The Waves. It argues that the characters in Woolf's book adhere to Kristeva's discussion of the gendering of relations to language, and, in particular, each of the three female characters can be understood as following one of the patterns of psychic identification as Kristeva describes them.